CRO

Quintiles pairs up with IMS to use real-world data in post-market studies

Quintiles' Scott Evangelista

Quintiles ($Q) signed a deal with healthcare information giant IMS Health to pair its own clinical development expertise with its partner's huge trove of real-world data, planning to use anonymized patient information to steer drug trials.

The collaboration will at once help biopharma companies gather real-world evidence of drugs' effectiveness and allow them to apply those data to in-development projects, the companies said. IMS brings access to more than 500 million anonymous patient records, while Quintiles contributes its years' of running clinical trials around the globe.

Together, the partners say they can create an expanding loop of patient data, improving how real-world evidence is collected and then plugging it back in to the R&D process.

"As demand increases for real-world evidence, biopharmaceutical companies need to integrate data from multiple sources to accelerate critical insights for stakeholders," Scott Evangelista, president of Quintiles' Integrated Healthcare Services division, said in a statement. "This collaboration greatly enhances access to healthcare data from across the world--providing customers with the critical information and the related services needed to demonstrate the value of their medicines to physicians, payers and patients."

Quintiles has been tinkering with its postmarket-research business over the past few years, consolidating its pharmacovigilance, label management, risk-benefit and analytics offerings into a single product for approved drugs, plus inking buyout deals to bolster its position on the market.

- read the statement